Users, such as independent and corporate merchants, use various services to accept and process payments and other financial transactions. Merchants that fail to adopt popular financial services, or decide to operate on a “cash only” basis, may lose out on potential business because many potential consumers prefer to conduct transactions using credit, debit, ATM and gift cards, as well as other forms of non-cash transactions. The ability to run a profitable business can hinge on a merchant's ability to accept as many forms of payment and conduct as many types of transactions as possible.
However, due to the subscription and/or transaction costs associated with accepting each brand or type of payment or financial service offered by various networks, gateways or processors, some merchants will elect to accept and process only a small portion of the available services from a limited number of the available networks, gateways, processors or other service providers. For example, an independent online merchant may find the cost of accepting all of the payment or financial services offered by Visa™, MasterCard™, American Express™ Discover™, and other brands of services, prohibitively expensive. In addition to the direct costs and fees associated with subscribing to or using the various payment networks, there are additional incremental overhead costs associated with each additional payment network adopted by a merchant.
For example, each payment network or service can have separate and distinct compliance, operational and maintenance requirements. Each service provider typically includes its own unique set of practices and procedures with which the merchant must comply in order to use a particular service from a particular service provider. Currently, there is no standard communication protocol for interacting with networks, gateways, processors and other service providers. Accordingly, integrating and managing the requisite procedures and practices for each service a merchant uses adds additional operating costs in the form of additional head count or in the form of the merchant's or the merchant's employee's time.
Subscribing to multiple services or services providers requires keeping up with different transaction request formats, interface standards, connectivity models, and reporting, settlement and reconciliation procedures required by each service provider. Managing the various requirements can easily overwhelm the capabilities and resources of some merchants and can cause merchants, especially smaller merchants, to limit the total number of services to which they subscribe or use, and, consequently, the number of payment forms they accept.
When a merchant limits the number of services it uses, not only might it lose business to other merchants that take more varied forms of payment, it effectively limits the number and types of ancillary services to which it has access. For example, a merchant may choose to accept Visa™ and Mastercard™ credit cards to capture the largest share of potential cardholder sales, but may know that it would benefit from fraud and risk services offered by another payment network or third-party service provider to which it has no access. Currently, there is no way for a merchant, small or otherwise, to quickly and cost effectively customize the ancillary service it receives when they subscribe to a particular payment network, gateway or processor.
Similarly, there is no efficient and effective framework or market place for third-party financial service providers to offer specialized or custom services to merchants before, during and after a transaction is requested, processed or completed between a merchant and its customers or other merchants. Likewise, there is no mechanism for one branded network to offer its particular selection of value-add services in an on-demand or a la carte manner.
Embodiments of the present invention address these and other deficiencies.